The Download Blog – CNET Download.com

In playing such iconic characters as Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella, and Baba Wawa, “Saturday Night Live” original cast comedian Gilda Radner helped popularize the sketch comedy series in its first five seasons, from 1975 to 1980. While myriad female comedians — including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, and Cecily Strong — continue to cite her as an influence, documentary filmmaker Lisa D’Apolito was worried that a younger generation of comedy fans would never discover her talents, almost… Read More »

While Apple was busy pitching its shiny new watches and iPhones to the world today, rival Google took the opportunity to let us know that it’s killing Inbox, an alternative to Gmail that the company’s been developing in tandem for about four years.

Thankfully, Google will keep Inbox plugged in through March 2019, so you at least have a healthy amount of time to get reacquainted with Gmail (Android, iOS) — which has been busily incorporating and expanding… Read More »

In recent years, Microsoft has gotten a lot friendlier towards iOS and Android, particularly with its Office suite and the Edge browser. However, on the home turf of Windows 10, the company can still get slippery. You’ve probably seen the OS use the system notification panel inappropriately to show you ads for Office and other Microsoft products before, but the company is upping the ante with the big Windows 10 update coming out in October.

With MacOS 10.12 “Mojave,” Apple begin the process of porting iOS apps to Mac. Mac users will get a glimpse of the first set of iOS apps on Mac on September 24, when Apple said it will release MacOS Mojave with four of its own apps: News, Stocks, Voice Memos, and Home. Then in 2019, third-party developers will be able to start moving their own apps to the Mac App Store.

With its latest Apple Watch Series 4, Apple is putting the focus squarely on your health. The upcoming Apple Watch Series 4 with WatchOS 5 will come with a new collection of heart-monitoring tools that, according to Apple COO Jeff Williams, will make Apple’s smart watch “a guardian for your health.”

At the Apple Steve Jobs Theatre on the Apple Park campus in Cupertino this morning, the company showed off the newest generation of its smart watch and how… Read More »

Companies and organizations are quickly realizing the many ways new technology can help those with disabilities navigate the new digital environment, and one team of eBay workers put their heads together and created HeadGaze, an iOS app that lets you move around an iPhone screen with only a turn of the head.

“As someone with extensive motor impairments, I do not have full control of my limbs. Consequently, I am unable to walk or grab anything with my hands. These… Read More »

Open banking regulations recently passed across the UK were designed to spur innovation and loosen the grip of a handful of legacy banks from the country’s financial system. The new rules forced large banks to open up their consumer data through secure APIs, giving app makers and other banks access to information that could then be used to create any number of useful financial services.

In response to the changes, Barclays has rolled out an update to its mobile app that… Read More »

Hurricane Florence is fast approaching the east coast of the US and is registering as a dangerous Category storm. Officials declared a state of emergency and told citizens in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia to evacuate on Tuesday.

Florence might be one of the strongest hurricanes to hit the east coast in decades, but some residents are choosing to hunker down and ride it out.

There’s an app for almost everything these days, so why wouldn’t there be an app to help you stay off your phone? Digital wellness has been a popular topic with social media companies this past year. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all launched features to help users curb their screen time. But, the Flipd app (iOS, Android) lets you build up your “unplugged” tolerance. It’s essentially a lock challenge that tests your self control. You can join… Read More »

Back in June, at WWDC 2018, Apple’s senior VP Craig Federighi made the jaw-dropping announcement that iOS apps are coming to the Mac with the MacOS 10.14 Mojave upgrade. Well, the first four of these iOS apps have been announced, and they’re, not surprisingly, native ones. There’s Apple News, Stocks, Voice Memos, and Home.

When disaster strikes, you’ll fare better if you’ve stocked 72 hours’ worth of water and nonperishable food, a battery-powered radio, flashlight, first-aid kit, extra batteries, whistle, moist towelettes, a wrench or pliers, a manual can opener, local maps, a cell phone with chargers, and a backup battery. But what’s on your mobile phone may be just as valuable. You can pull up Google’s Public Alerts to start, and then check out our top 17 apps to help you before,… Read More »

Over the years, Google has needed to get very good about power consumption to keep the electrical bills of its data centers under control. Some of its data centers have crunched numbers so intensely that it’s apparently resorted in the past to installing them on barges cooled by bay water.

The world of survey taking is dogged by one question: Are the people who don’t answer surveys different from the people who do? It can never be answered to anyone’s satisfaction, because the very avoidance of polling makes the unknown group difficult to know.

What you can do, however, is incentivize as many people as possible to lift your response rate, and an Australian tech startup named ClearPoll has an interesting idea about how to do that.

Googling “chicken recipes” generates hundreds of results which probably won’t help you figure out what to cook for dinner any faster. The PixFood app (iOS, Android) gives you a bearable number of unique, recipes that look tasty.

The app uses your smartphone’s camera and AI to pick out a range of choices. PixFood offers access without an account (which is free), but having an account helps the app personalize your results.

If there’s anything that social networks have taught us, it’s that seemingly boring information about yourself can be packaged up and sold in bulk to the highest bidder. This data is then used to create profiles of us that allow advertisers to more accurately market toward their target audience. Ideally, the end user is made aware of this arrangement and is given the ability to opt out.

But other times, the app in question may not be playing by the rules…. Read More »

Select Instagram users are testing out the mobile app video tagging feature. TechCrunch reported tagging in videos will work similar to tagging photos. It’s possible videos would be more difficult to tag friends in.

Tagging in a video redirects users to a new page, “People in this Video.” The page displays the Instagram users who are in the video or anyone the user might want to add. It doesn’t look like the videos will appear on tagged users’ profiles… Read More »